Commenting on the Education Select Committee’s report on grammar schools, Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union in the UK, said:

“The Education Committee’s scepticism about the Government’s plans for the expansion of selective education is well founded and echoes concerns raised consistently by the NASUWT.

“In particular, and as the Committee notes, Government assertions that expansion of the selective sector will expand opportunity for children from deprived backgrounds and enhance social mobility remain entirely unsubstantiated.

“The Committee is right to call out these proposals as a massive distraction from the real barriers to achievement that too many children and young people continue to face.

“It is time that Ministers recognised that growing child poverty, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis and the widespread use of underhand forms of selection by schools in England are among the most profound threats to educational excellence and equity.

“The Government would be better served by moving these issues further up its priority list if its claims to believe in an education system that works for everyone is to be taken seriously.”